


Takes One to Know One

by SlipKnitPass



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Evan "Buck" Buckley Has ADHD, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, and some anxiety for fun, the plot that wouldn't leave me alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27288763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlipKnitPass/pseuds/SlipKnitPass
Summary: Buck knows he's fidgety and, okay, so maybe sometimes he zones out, but it's not like he's letting it interfere with his life or his relationships. Then, he meets Maby, who gives him a whole new perspective.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	Takes One to Know One

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, I don't even know what this is, but hopefully you get some enjoyment out of it. (Also, I included a time jump at the end because I'm genuinely the worst at writing anything more than a one-shot, so...)

The thing is, he’s heard it his whole life. At first it’s “sit still, Evan” and “that fidgeting is getting on my nerves” and “now’s not the time, Evan.” (Even more vividly, he remembers every time his parents looked at him and sighed, “Maddie just wasn’t this difficult”). Later, it changes, becomes “Evan, have you heard a word I’ve said?” or “Evan, why can’t you just pay attention in class?” or sometimes just “Really, Evan?” and he realizes he can’t remember the last time someone said his name without that sharp, frustrated edge to their tone. (All these years later, he thinks that it’s the reason he chose to start going by Buck.)

Eventually, it all starts to sound like “everything about you is wrong, Buck.” So he learns. Buck learns to take everything about his personality - all the parts that are annoying, or exhausting, or different from other kids - and shove them deep down in a box. He becomes the person people want him to be: cheerful and easy-going, not overstimulated by normal activities or fidgety and inattentive. When he needs a break, when he feels like he can’t possibly pretend any more, he spends long stretches of time alone in his room, where his bad habits won’t bother anyone else. It’s a half life, really, but the people around him seem to love him more when he’s pretending and so Buck thinks maybe it’s worth the sacrifice. By the time he becomes part of the 118 family, he’s been hiding for so long that he’s not even sure where to find himself anymore.

\--

In the end, it’s Christopher who indirectly saves him. (And Buck finds it strange, to be saved when you didn’t know you were drowning.) Chris had begged Eddie to let him invite Buck to his school’s winter Open House and Student Showcase, where he’d have some of his projects from art class on display, among other things. Buck is incapable of denying Chris anything and immediately agrees to attend.

“This way, Buck! We’re gonna be late!” Now that Buck has admired his artwork and made the appropriate comments on it, Chris is pulling on his jacket sleeve and pointing towards a classroom down the hall. Buck grabs the back of Eddie’s shirt to tug him along with them.

“What are we gonna be late for, buddy?” Buck asks, matching his stride to Chris’s pace.

“It’s a surprise!” Chris replies excitedly.

The surprise turns out to be a presentation by Chris’s class and their high school mentors, part of a buddy program started by one of the high school teachers at the school. Buck’s sitting in the back, smiling absently at Chris while he tries desperately to focus on what’s happening at the front of the room. He can tell he hasn’t given himself enough alone time to indulge in his more annoying habits because he can’t seem to stop moving: bouncing his knee, rolling his shoulders, tapping his fingers on the edge of the too-small desk he’s squished into. Buck’s good at keeping his motions small, so no one really notices, but he’s about to resort to stuffing his hands in his jacket pocket when something is set on the desk in front of him. Buck looks down to see a lump of green clay on the desk now; when he looks up, he sees a woman about his age smiling conspiratorially. The badge clipped to her lanyard marks her as a teacher.

“Try squishing that in your hand,” she urges quietly, without calling attention to him. “It helps a lot of my students.” And then, with no fanfare, no judgement, and no reprimand, she moves away from him to circulate around the classroom. Buck hesitantly picks up the clay and starts to roll it around in his hand. It’s stiffer than playdoh and he finds it takes actual force to squish it, but it keeps his hands occupied and allows him to focus somewhat better. He appreciates that he can hide it easily and it’s less obvious than tapping his fingers. It doesn’t solve all his problems, but with one less thing to worry about people judging him for, he finds himself more relaxed than he’s been (possibly) in years.

\--

“Buck are you coming to get ice cream with us?” Chris asks as the evening concludes, giving him the most intense puppy eyes Buck has ever seen.

“Wouldn’t miss it, bud. There’s just one thing I have to do. How about I meet you guys there?”

Once Eddie and Chris have left, heading for the parking lot, Buck walks back to the room where the mentor program had presented. He sees the woman who gave him the clay chatting with two students by the teacher’s desk and he stands by the door to wait for her, still playing with the clay in his hand. She notices him and wraps up her conversation, telling her students she’ll see them on Monday, before she makes her way over to him.

“I, uh, I wanted to return this to you,” he says, holding out the clay. She smiles and waves a hand in the air.

“No need to return it. Honestly, I keep a pretty big tub of it over in my classroom for my students. Some of them need something to do with their hands. This is a good compromise: it’s quiet, but they’re getting out some of that energy.”

“And you just...let them do that during class?” Buck can’t imagine a teacher not getting onto a student for fidgeting, never mind _enabling_ them.

“Well, sure. It’s not their fault they need to move and as long as it’s not distracting anyone else, there’s no harm. I really feel like education is unkind to active students or the ones who have trouble sitting still and it’s a particularly difficult struggle for-” Abruptly, she cuts herself off. “Sorry, I have a lot of opinions on education, but there’s no need for me to infodump that on you. I spend so much time around teenagers that I get over-excited when I get to talk to another adult,” she says self-deprecatingly.

And it’s a tone Buck is so achingly familiar with: that need to pretend you’re less into something than you are, so you don’t come off as too intense. The certainty that if you revealed your passions, you’d be dismissed at best and ridiculed at worst. Maybe this woman, this stranger, had some things in common with him.

“No, I’d love to hear what you think,” he reassures her warmly. “I’m Evan Buckley. Buck.”

“Oh, Chris’s uncle Buck! I’ve heard a lot about you; I’m Mabyn Thompson, but I usually go by Maby. I’m the sophomore history teacher and mentor program coordinator.”

Buck’s phone chimes and he knows without looking that it’s Eddie, wondering if he’s on his way to the ice cream parlor. He makes a snap decision.

“Do you want to go out for coffee on Sunday?” he says suddenly, his most charming grin on display.

“Oh, uh, yeah. I think I’d like that very much,” Maby replies with a surprisingly shy smile. In short order they’ve exchanged phone numbers, picked a time and place, and Buck is on his way out of the building, a new spring in his step and the stirring of hope in his heart.

\--

Maby hurries into Cool Beans, hoping that Buck hasn’t been sitting there for too long. (She’d had every intention of arriving a few minutes early, but her poor sense of time management got the best of her.) She looks out across the crowded café and sees him at a table by the window; Maby waves as she jumps in line to order.

Once they’re both settled with their drinks, Maby feels the first date awkwardness set in. She’s having trouble hearing him and when she really looks at Buck, she can see that his attention is wandering. She has a feeling that he would sit there for their entire date without complaining about being overstimulated, but he’s cute and Maby is hoping he’ll ask for a second date, so she’d like for him to actually enjoy this one.

“Hey, Buck? Do you mind if we sit outside?” she suggests, putting a hand over his to get his attention. “It’s loud in here and it’s hard to focus on what you’re saying.”

He gives her a surprised smile and picks up her drink for her, leading her outside and holding the door for her as they head out to the coffee shop’s patio. She breathes a sigh of relief as they settle at a table on the mostly-empty back patio.

“There was a lot going on in there; I'm so used to listening for any problems that come up in the classroom and I have trouble focusing my attention on one person when there are a lot of other things happening,” she admits easily.

“I have the same problem,” Buck blurts, then seems to draw back into himself. “I mean, it’s fine, I don’t let it interfere with my life.”

Maby breaks the sudden tension by asking Buck about being a firefighter and she sees some of the guardedness slip away as he speaks excitedly about a profession that’s clearly more a passion than a job. It reminds her of her favorite parts of teaching - coaxing that same enthusiasm and confidence out of students - with the added bonus that Buck is almost certainly the most attractive man she’s ever been on a date with. She finds herself hoping (again) that this won’t be just another in a string of first dates.

\--

 _Oh, God, stop talking Buckley,_ Buck tells himself, even as he tells her another story about pranks he and the 118 have pulled on each other at the firehouse. Maby is smiling at him, chin propped on one hand, as she sips her latte, but he knows he’s dominating the conversation. _As usual, failing to engage in normal human interaction,_ he thinks with a mental eye roll at himself.

“That’s definitely enough about me. I promise, I’m not normally like this,” Buck says, looking away from her and down at his hands, picking at the curled edge of the cardboard sleeve on his cup. He spares a second to wish he’d brought the clay she’d given him, which he now usually carries in his pocket.

“If you’ll recall, the first time we met, I info-dumped my thoughts on education after literally a minute and a half of interaction,” she reminds him wryly. “So really, you’re in good company. Besides, I love to hear people talk about the things they’re passionate about. It’s like a glimpse into someone’s soul.”

“But I’m sure 15 minutes of firefighting stories isn’t what you expected. Normally I’m better about restraining myself.”

(And it just breaks Maby’s heart to hear him apologize for his passion.)

He asks her about her job and her interests and finds they have a lot of common ground; he grins as she speaks passionately about her students, education in general, and recreational rock climbing, among other things. Buck is startled to find that, before he knows it, hours have passed.

As much as the team likes to tease him about being a ladies’ man, Buck actually finds dates exhausting most of the time. The feeling of having to police your actions to make sure you don’t come off as “too much” makes it hard to meaningfully engage with the other person. But this time is different. Buck finds himself relaxing a tiny bit as he sees his own behavior reflected in Maby. She has a tendency to switch positions in her chair every so often, going from legs crossed, to knees up, to criss-cross; she occasionally asks him to repeat something he’s said, apologizing for not paying attention.

The startling thing for Buck is that none of it bothers him. It’s not annoying or obnoxious, it just seems to be natural. For the first time in a long time — maybe ever— Buck thinks that maybe the parts of himself that he’d shoved in that box so long ago aren’t inherently bad, and maybe they don’t make him less deserving of love. It doesn’t bother him to see them in Maby, a relative stranger, so maybe the people who love him wouldn’t mind them so much either.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Buck says suddenly. “Besides that, I mean.” He continues when Maby laughs and nods. “How did you know...that trick with the clay - how did you know I needed it? How did you know it would work?”

“Well, I have a lot of students who are genuinely trying in class, but struggle to pay attention. By the time they get to me, they’ve gotten really good at hiding it, but I got really good at noticing it. Hiding it doesn’t do them any favors and it doesn’t give me an opportunity to help them. Then during my second year of teaching I went to a workshop on helping active and ADHD students in class, so I borrowed a lot of my tricks from there.”

“Why do you go to so much trouble for them? Like, couldn’t you just send them to the office?” Buck asks, a note of vulnerability in his voice.

“I mean, who does that benefit though? For the students who want to be sent out, I’m playing into their hands. Usually, though, it’s not that the student is trying to be a problem and sending them out means they just miss more content,” Maby explains with a shrug.

“I wish I’d had a teacher like you in school,” Buck tells her, looking intently into her eyes.

He feels a warmth in his chest when she blushes and looks away. _Uh-oh, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,_ he thinks, followed closely by: _I’d better leave here with a second date planned_.

\--

Maby figures that Buck has endured the same struggles that she and many of her own students have. It takes years of practice to have as much control of yourself as Buck does while giving the appearance of being laid-back and easygoing. She feels a pang of sympathy for him at the knowledge that he had probably been punished for something that was both not his fault, and had a myriad of solutions readily available.

Still, she finds herself crossing her fingers, hoping that this date isn’t going to be a therapy session, that he’ll want to see her again as more than a friendly ear. Her phone chimes and she looks down, startled to see a text from her best friend asking if she was on her way to dinner. When she checks the time, Maby is shocked to see that it’s almost 6:00.

“Buck, I’m so sorry, but I have dinner plans with my friend, Chelsea and I didn’t realize it was so late. But I had a really good time and, um, I’d like to do this again, if you want to.” She’s nervously picking at the hair tie on her wrist, looking down as she speaks.

“I would love to see you again,” Buck responds, putting his hand over hers and stilling her movements.

She looks up to see a warm smile on his face and every indication that, yes, he likes her as potentially more than a friend. Buck walks her to her car and they make plans to see each other again. There’s the usual awkwardness of how to end a first date, which Maby ends by wrapping Buck in a hug. He melts against her for a minute before stepping back and opening her car door with a smile. He watches her car disappear and falls in love as she’s driving away

**SIX MONTHS LATER**

Buck is sitting at the kitchen table at the 118, peeling potatoes for dinner and smiling at a dumb meme that Maby had texted him. He walks the peeled potatoes over to the counter where Bobby’s working and then settles back down at the table. It’s not even five minutes before his leg starts bouncing and his fingers are tapping the tabletop. He immediately sits up straighter and stills, but then remembers the day Maby pointed out that he always assumes his habits are annoying.

_“Instead,” she had said, “why don’t you let other people tell you if it’s bothering them? If they ask you to stop, you certainly can, but most of the time, people just don’t notice other people that closely._

_(When he had pointed out that she had noticed it about him, she gave him a flat, unamused look.)_

So for the first time since he was seven years old, Buck consciously makes the decision to stop resisting the impulse to move and instead relaxes into the chair and lets himself fidget like he wants to.

“Hey, Buck?” Bobby says suddenly, turning away from the cutting board and facing him directly. Buck’s heart rate picks up and his breath catches, certain he’s about to be called out. “You’ve been a lot happier lately, more comfortable in your own skin. I’m proud of how far you’ve come.” He pauses and then raises his eyebrows. “Can I assume there’s a woman behind this transformation?”

“Yeah, Maby,” Buck replies with a smile.


End file.
